Download or read book Rural Communities in Late Byzantium written by Fotini Kondyli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that Late Byzantine rural communities were resilient and able to transform their socioeconomic strategies in the face of crisis.
Download or read book Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium written by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to examine the late Byzantine village through written, archaeological and painted sources.
Download or read book The Donkey and the Boat written by Chris Wickham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other. Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.
Download or read book The Byzantine Neighbourhood written by Fotini Kondyli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Byzantine Neighbourhood contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities through the adoption of a neighbourhood perspective. It offers a multi-disciplinary investigation of the spatial and social practices that produced Byzantine concepts of neighbourhood and afforded dynamic interactions between different actors, elite and non-elite. Authors further consider neighbourhoods as political entities, examining how varieties of collectivity formed in Byzantine neighbourhoods translated into political action. By both acknowledging the unique position of Constantinople, and giving serious attention to the varieties of provincial experience, the contributors consider regional factors (social, economic, and political) that formed the ties of local communities to the state and illuminate the mechanisms of empire. Beyond its Byzantine focus, this volume contributes to broader discussions of premodern urbanism by drawing attention to the spatial dimension of social life and highlighting the involvement of multiple agents in city-making.
Download or read book Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity written by Thomas S. Burns and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent publications on urbanism and the rural environment in Late Antiquity, most of which explore a single region or narrow chronological niche, have emphasized either textual or archeological evidence. None has attempted the more ambitious task of bringing together the full range of such evidence within a multiregional perspective and around common themes. Urban Centers and Rural Contexts seeks to redress this omission. While ancient literature and the physical remains of cities attest to the power that urban values held over the lives of their inhabitants, the rural areas in which the majority of imperial citizens lived have not been well served by the historical record. Only recently have archeological excavations and integrated field surveys sufficiently enhanced our knowledge of the rural contexts to demonstrate the continuing interdependence of urban centers and rural communities in Late Antiquity. These new data call into question the conventional view that this interdependence progressively declined as a result of governmental crises, invasions, economic dislocation, and the success of Christianization. The essays in this volume require us to abandon the search for a single model of urban and rural change; to reevaluate the cities and towns of the Empire as centers of habitation, rather than archeological museums; and to reconsider the evidence of continuous and pervasive cultural change across the countryside. Deploying a wide range of material as well as literary evidence, the authors provide access not only into the world of élites, but also to the scarcely known lives of those without a voice in the literature, those men and women who worked in the shops, labored in the fields, and humbled themselves before their gods. They bring us closer to the complexity of life in late ancient communities and, in consequence, closer to both urban and rural citizens.
Download or read book The Byzantine Economy written by Angeliki E. Laiou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a concise survey of the economy of the Byzantine Empire from the fourth century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Organised chronologically, the book addresses key themes such as demography, agriculture, manufacturing and the urban economy, trade, monetary developments, and the role of the state and ideology. It provides a comprehensive overview of the economy with an emphasis on the economic actions of the state and the productive role of the city and non-economic actors, such as landlords, artisans and money-changers. The final chapter compares the Byzantine economy with the economies of western Europe and concludes that the Byzantine economy was one of the most successful examples of a mixed economy in the pre-industrial world. This is the only concise general history of the Byzantine economy and will be essential reading for students of economic history, Byzantine history and medieval history more generally.
Download or read book Coming of Age in Byzantium written by Despoina Ariantzi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The various phases of life and their manifestations in theory and social reality constitute a well-established area of research in the fields of western medieval studies and ancient history. In this respect the Byzantine East has been widely neglected. This volume will focus on the Byzantine experience of adolescence, which may be defined as the biological transition from childhood to adulthood as well as the social and psychological experience of leaving the care of parents, guardians and family groups and the gradual integration into adult society. The contributions gathered therein treat seven subtopics that correspond to crucial questions in the current research on adolescence: the legal status of adolescents; the mechanisms of transition from childhood to adolescence; the socialisation and gradual integration into adult society; adolescents in Byzantine art; psychological aspects of adolescence from medieval to modern times; illnesses of adolescents; adolescents in the western medieval world.The focus is on the Middle and Late Byzantine Period, where historical, hagiographical,legal and medical sources offer rich material for an investigation of these aspects. The book contributes to a better understanding of all these questions and to show future trajectories for research.
Download or read book Archaeology and Urban Settlement in Late Roman and Byzantine Anatolia written by John Haldon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-22 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The site of medieval Euchaïta, on the northern edge of the central Anatolian plateau, was the centre of the cult of St Theodore Tiro ('the Recruit'). Unlike most excavated or surveyed urban centres of the Byzantine period, Euchaïta was never a major metropolis, cultural centre or extensive urban site, although it had a military function from the seventh to ninth centuries. Its significance lies precisely in the fact that as a small provincial town, something of a backwater, it was probably more typical of the 'average' provincial Anatolian urban settlement, yet almost nothing is known about such sites. This volume represents the results of a collaborative project that integrates archaeological survey work with other disciplines in a unified approach to the region both to enhance understanding of the history of Byzantine provincial society and to illustrate the application of innovative approaches to field survey.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium written by Mati Meyer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes. Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public. Chapter 21 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Cultural Encounters on Byzantium s Northern Frontier c AD 500 700 written by Andrei Gandila and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the sixth century, Byzantine emperors secured the provinces of the Balkans by engineering a frontier system of unprecedented complexity. Drawing on literary, archaeological, anthropological, and numismatic sources, Andrei Gandila argues that cultural attraction was a crucial component of the political frontier of exclusion in the northern Balkans. If left unattended, the entire edifice could easily collapse under its own weight. Through a detailed analysis of the archaeological evidence, the author demonstrates that communities living beyond the frontier competed for access to Byzantine goods and reshaped their identity as a result of continual negotiation, reinvention, and hybridization. In the hands of 'barbarians', Byzantine objects, such as coins, jewelry, and terracotta lamps, possessed more than functional or economic value, bringing social prestige, conveying religious symbolism embedded in the iconography, and offering a general sense of sharing in the Early Byzantine provincial lifestyle.
Download or read book Wine Wealth and the State in Late Antique Egypt written by Todd Hickey and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic practices and theory of the Roman Empire, as seen through the lens of the estate of the Flavii Apiones
Download or read book Life in an Egyptian Village in Late Antiquity written by Giovanni R. Ruffini and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most ancient history focuses on the urban elite. Papyrology explores the daily lives of the more typical men and women in antiquity. Aphrodito, a village in sixth-century AD Egypt, is antiquity's best source for micro-level social history. The archive of Dioskoros of Aphrodito introduces thousands of people living the normal business of their lives: loans, rent contracts, work agreements, marriage, divorce. In exceptional cases, the papyri show raw conflict: theft, plunder, murder. Throughout, Dioskoros struggles to keep his family in power in Aphrodito, and to keep Aphrodito independent from the local tax collectors. The emerging picture is a different vision of Roman late antiquity than what we see from the view of the urban elites. It is a world of free peasants building networks of trust largely beyond the reach of the state. Aphrodito's eighth-century AD papyri show that this world dies in the early years of Islamic rule.
Download or read book The Byzantine Hellene written by Dimiter Angelov and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of Theodore Laskaris, a thirteenth-century Byzantine emperor, imaginative philosopher, and ideologue of Hellenism.
Download or read book Archaeology of the Mediterranean during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages written by Angelo Castrorao Barba and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Varied approaches to an overlooked time period in the history and archaeology of the Mediterranean This book presents multidisciplinary perspectives on Greece, Corsica, Malta, and Sicily from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries, an often-overlooked time in the history of the central Mediterranean. The research approaches and areas of specialization collected here range from material culture to landscape settlement patterns, from epigraphy to architecture and architectural decoration, and from funerary archaeology to urban fabric and cityscapes. Topics covered in these chapters include late Roman villas; the formation of Byzantine and Islamic settlements in western Sicily; reuse of protohistoric sites in late antiquity and the middle ages in eastern Sicily; early Christian landscapes and settlements in Corsica; the transition from late antiquity through Byzantine rule to Muslim conquest in Malta; trade network trajectories of the Aegean islands and Crete; and crosscultural interactions in medieval Greece. Together, these essays show the potential of post-Ancient and post-Classical archaeology, highlighting missing links between the Roman world and medieval Byzantium and broadening the horizons of new generations of archaeologists. Contributors: Carla Aleo Nero | Effie F. Athanassopoulos | Giuseppe Bazan | Amelia R. Brown | Gabriele Castiglia | Angelo Castrorao Barba | David Cardona | Santino Alessandro Cugno | Michael J. Decker | Franco Dell’Aquila | Scott Gallimore | Matt King | Rosa Lanteri | Pasquale Marino | Roberto Miccichè | Philippe Pergola | Filippo Pisciotta | Natalia Poulou | Grant Schrama | Claudia Speciale | Davide Tanasi
Download or read book Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity written by Mark Humphries and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last half century has seen an explosion in the study of late antiquity, which has characterised the period between the third and seventh centuries not as one of catastrophic collapse and ‘decline and fall’, but rather as one of dynamic and positive transformation. Yet research on cities in this period has provoked challenges to this positive picture of late antiquity. This study surveys the nature of this debate, examining problems associated with the sources historians use to examine late antique urbanism, and the discourses and methodological approaches they have constructed from them. It aims to set out the difficulties and opportunities presented by the study of cities in late antiquity in terms of transformations of politics, the economy, and religion, and to show that this period witnessed very real upheaval and dislocation alongside continuity and innovation in cities around the Mediterranean.
Download or read book Late Byzantium Reconsidered written by Andrea Mattiello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late Byzantium Reconsidered offers a unique collection of essays analysing the artistic achievements of Mediterranean centres linked to the Byzantine Empire between 1261, when the Palaiologan dynasty re-conquered Constantinople, and the decades after 1453, when the Ottomans took the city, marking the end of the Empire. These centuries were characterised by the rising of socio-political elites, in regions such as Crete, Italy, Laconia, Serbia, and Trebizond, that, while sharing cultural and artistic values influenced by the Byzantine Empire, were also developing innovative and original visual and cultural standards. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework offered by this volume aims to challenge established ideas concerning the late Byzantine period such as decline, renewal, and innovation. By examining specific case studies of cultural production from within and outside Byzantium, the chapters in this volume highlight the intrinsic innovative nature of the socio-cultural identities active in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean vis-à-vis the rhetorical assumption of the cultural contraction of the Byzantine Empire.
Download or read book Space and Communities in Byzantine Anatolia written by Nikolaos Kontogannis and published by . This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays explore the rich and complex regional settlements of Anatolia. The volume collects twenty-six papers on Byzantine-period Anatolia that were presented at the Fifth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium held in June 2019. The sections of the book focus on subjects including landscape dynamics, settlements and communication, regional networks, cityscapes, private and sacred space, and cultural interactions and identities. The essays cover a wide period, ranging from the third to the fifteenth century.
